Description
The DAISY system is a quasi random, shift register feedback based voltage and pulse generator. This display features a double DAISY! Two units one on top of the other. Very few DAISY units were made so it is incredible to have two here at MESS. Designed in the early to mid 1970’s by Jon Roy and Joel Chadabe the system was tapping into the recent emergence of chaos theory and was designed as a way to control external synthesisers with chaotic CV information and rhythmic patterns. An early DAISY was installed at the Centre for Music Experiment at the University of California San Diego where composers likle Warren Burt and Richard Lainhart worked with it to control the Serge synthesizer. This studio clearly inspired Burt who went on to commission a large format Serge and the two DAISY systems you see here for the opening of the LaTrobe University Music Department. The Serge paperface tha was also part of that commission is avialable to use inside!
Not much is written about this machine and not many works using it have been documented. Below are some notes from Warren Burt:
“In the 70s we ordered 2 daisies and the gates unit from John Roy for the La Trobe Uni Studios. It was used to control our large Serge System, which I specified and built. A photo is attached. Eventually, the analog studio at La Trobe Uni was closed, and the equipment sold off. (This was in the mid-80s – La Trobe Music was shut down in 1999.) Then, around 1995, I was in the 2nd hand electronix junque shop run at the time by the Melbourne synth designer Paul Francis Perry. There, in the corner, was our Daisy! He said someone had gotten it from La Trobe, but had just traded it to him for some other piece of gear. I offered him $200 for it on the spot. He said, “Oh, no, not that much!” but I insisted. (This was in a time when I was freelancing and didn’t have a lot of money.) I immediately went to the bank, took out the money, went back to his shop, paid him and got a cab home with Daisy in tow. The last time I used Daisy publicly was in a 1997 performance at Theatre of the Ordinary, Melbourne – an improvisational piece for Daisy and an Ensoniq EPS called “Daisy Feeds The Temporal Piano Attractor” which is on my CD “Four Experimental Computer Pieces 1995-1997.”
